EU Parliament Elections 2024: The day after
Here’s a bit of historical background to keep in mind with EU politics.
1922: Mussolini becomes Prime Minister of Italy when he is appointed by Italian King Vittorio Immanuel III. (The “March on Rome” was PR hype; the deal between Mussolini and the king had already been agreed to behind the scenes.)
1933: German Reichspresident Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor. Less than a year before, Hindenburg had defeated Hitler in the German Presidential election.
2016: British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron agrees to hold a popular referendum on Brexit, which was successful. The Tories then negotiated Brexit, which officially took place in 2020. On July 4 of this year, the Tories face a national election campaign while their longer-term viability as a party is seriously under question, as it is painfully clear that Tory promises about the benefits of Brexit haven’t come close to being realized.
The common thread connecting these three things? Conservatives embraced the radical right in the hope they could benefit and still be able to call the shots.
Britain is no longer part of the EU, but it is still a part of Europe. And the July 4 election there will be a significant milestone in this “super election year” of 2024. “A … realization is dawning on the U.K.’s Conservatives today as they face the prospect of not only defeat at the general election on July 4, but an electoral hammering so severe it could fundamentally alter the party’s makeup.”1 Whether the Tories will change their strategic direction as a result of the “realization” is a whole different question.
Not incidentally, conservative French President Emmanuel Macron announced he was dissolving Parliament and holding a snap election on June 30:
The outcome of the EU elections, he acknowledged, is "not a good result for parties who defend Europe." Macron noted that, including the top scoring National Rally (RN), far-right parties in France managed to take almost 40 percent of the vote in the EU elections in France.2
And, yes, this is another case of the center-right over a couple of decades trying to co-opt the position of the far-right (Marine Le Pen’s National Rally/RN) and winding up with serious doubts of its own viability. Macron’s own Renew party started out as a rightwing alternative to the conservative-Gaullist party Les Républicains (LR), which crippled itself by catering the far right.
The chorus of Pete Seeger’s famous song comes to mind: “When will they ever learn?/When will they ever learn?”3
It's worth noting that this AP article is clueless on this point:
Sensing a threat from the far right, the Christian Democrats of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already shifted further to the right on migration and climate ahead of the elections — and were rewarded by remaining by far the biggest group in the 720-seat European Parliament and de facto brokers of the ever expanding powers of the legislature.4
The US party system works differently than those of most EU countries. But the US Democrats also are in chronic need of being more assertive in fighting for their own side and against the other side. The rightwing “identity” issue of immigration and refugees is one on which the Biden Administration is trying to ape the ethnonationalist position of the Republicans. And that’s a really bad idea. (The AP’s ditsy evaluation of the EU election results notwithstanding.)
In the wake of the EU Parliament elections, a key thing to watch will be the approach that current EU Commission President Ursula van der Leyen, who is part of the center-right/Christian Democratic European People’s Party (EPP), takes to attempting to retain her current position. She won’t have enough votes from the EPP alone to remain as Commission President.
The Hindenburg-Vittorio Immanuel-Brexit play would be to rely on the votes of the far-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc. That EU Parliament party includes Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s “post-fascist” Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, Spain’s Vox party, and the Sweden Democrats (SD), all hard right parties.5
There is a separate far-right bloc in the European Parliament, Identity and Democracy (ID), which includes Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) and the notorious German Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). If Van der Leyen’s center-left EPP bloc forms a coalition with the ECR bloc to keep her as Commission President, they will be following the road that wound up devastating the center-right in France and Italy and now puts the continuing viability of the ancient Tory Party in Britain into question.
European-level parties are discussed in the press much less than their national component parties are. But Meloni’s party FdI, Spain’s Vox, and the Sweden Democrats are all hard-right parties whose commitment to democracy is, politely speaking, dubious. And EPP/ECR coalition selecting the Commission President would be a very bad development.
The center-right parties – and the Democrats in the US (who at the moment would look more center-right than center-left in the European context, though Biden’s economic policies do depart from neoliberal dogma more than the European center-left in inclined to do) – rightly stress that democracy is at stake and tend to frame it as Democracy vs. Autocracy on a grand scale.
But when the center-right goes weak on preserving liberal democracy – the EUs model authoritarian Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz political party were once adherents of center-right, pro-liberal-democracy politics – that is a grim development. Prior to Orbán’s authoritarian turn, Fidesz was seen as the conservative alternative to the far-right Jobbik party in Hungary.
Even today, Fidesz has been aligned with the EPP bloc in the EU via Hungary’s Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP), which is closely allied to Fidesz, although Fidesz had no elected EU Parliament seats prior to this year’s elections:
The Hungarian Prime Minister's ultra-nationalist party received the most votes (44%) and will have 11 MEPs. However, it also experienced great losses, dropping a whopping 11% compared to the 2022 [Hungarian] general election results. This result is the party's biggest defeat in 18 years.6
After the return to power of an actual democratic center-right party in Poland, this in itself is a good sign for the moment, though it doesn’t mean any immediate change in Hungary’s government.
At least Orbán after the election gave a clear statement of what lessons he wanted European parties to take– which is pretty much diametrically opposite to what the pro-democracy parties should do. And the center-right parties in particular need to be aware of the trap he’s inviting them to step into: “’To sum up the result of the European parliamentary election we can resume it best as a telegram that sounds like this: Migration full stop. Gender full stop. War full stop. Soros full stop, Brussels full stop,’ he said.”
“Soros,” of course, is the contemporary right’s buzzword for the World Jewish Conspiracy they want people to believe is behind everything bad that happens in the world.
One assumes that “gender full stop” doesn’t mean he wants to end discrimination based on gender. Presumably, it’s intended to mean the opposite. But the “anti-woke” vocabulary can be as garbled in Europe as it often is in America.
Webber, Esther (2024): The death of the UK Conservative Party. Politico EU 06/07/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/death-uk-conservative-party-leadership-elections-house-commons-july-fourth-vote-polls-tory-reform/> (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Macron Dissolves Parliament, Calls Snap Elections In France On June 30. NDTV World 07/07/2024. <https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/emmanuel-macron-dissolves-parliament-calls-snap-elections-in-france-on-june-30-5854969> (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Peter, Paul and Mary - Where Have All the Flowers Gone (25th Anniversary Concert). ShoutFactoryMusicYouTube channel 01/11/2013. (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Associated Press (2024): Far-right gains in EU elections deal defeats to France's Macron and Germany's Scholz. NPR 06/09/2024. <https://www.npr.org/2024/06/09/nx-s1-4997712/far-right-europe-elections-france-macron-germany-scholz> (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Preve, Clara (2024): Italy: PM Meloni established as kingmaker as party secures win in elections. Euronews 06/10/2024. <https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/10/italy-pm-meloni-established-as-kingmaker-as-party-secures-win-in-elections> (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Skujins, Angela & Siposhegyi, Zoltán (2024): Hungary: Orban's right-wing party wins EU election but loses major support. Euronews 06/10/2024. <https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/10/hungary-orbans-right-wing-party-wins-eu-election-but-loses-major-support> (Accessed: 2024-10-06).
Tragic. The last thing we need right now is a shift to the right.